
Juneteenth
As the nation and Virginia prepares to celebrate Juneteenth, our new entry by Lauranett Lee takes a look at how the poignant celebration of the belated emancipation of the Black residents of Galveston, Texas, became a nationwide holiday incorporating a number of Freedom Day traditions, including those celebrated in Virginia. And while Juneteenth lays claim to being […]

Founding Fathers, Mothers, and Others
Warren G. Harding is credited with coining the term “Founding Fathers” to refer to the men who led the American Revolution and “dedicated a new republic to liberty and justice,” as he said in a 1916 speech to the Republican National Convention. There’s more than a little irony here. Harding was one of our least presidential […]

An especially malevolent form of American entrepreneurship
“Slave trader.” It’s one of the most loathsome expressions in the English language. Even enslavers claimed to recoil at that designation in the era when slavery flourished. Andrew Jackson took umbrage at being called a “negro-trader” during the bitter presidential election of 1828, even though the slaves he bought and sold as a young man […]

The 70th Anniversary of the Moton School Walkout
How student activism in Farmville, Virginia instigated the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education (1952-1954) decision to desegregate public schools

A Song by Any Other Name
What’s in a name? In the case of the now-retired state song of Virginia, a lot. The tale of the twisting, somewhat torturous history of “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia” tells us a lot about Lost Cause mythology, half-hearted attempts to erase the stain of racism, and what true reconciliation requires. “Carry Me Back […]

The Virginia Writers Project
By Nora Pehrson Just last week, Congress approved the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP), with it designating $135 million in federal funds to the National Endowment for the …

The Remarkable Journey of Elizabeth Keckly
Few stories in Encyclopedia Virginia are more dramatic than that of Elizabeth Hobbs Keckly. Born into slavery in Dinwiddie Courthouse, in the Piedmont region of Virginia, during the presidency of James Monroe, by the time that Abraham Lincoln entered the White House in 1861, not only was Keckly a free woman, but she was also Washington, D.C.’s most […]

This Small Garden Is Half My World
Celebrating the birthday of Anne Spencer, a writer of the Harlem Renaissance who lived and worked in segregated Lynchburg, Virginia

Bernard Cohen and the Legacy of Loving
Bernard Cohen, one of the two lawyers who successfully took on one of the last laws underpinning legal segregation in the landmark Loving v. Virginia case, died on October 12… Read More»

EV Election Edition
The air is crisp, and the first hints of color are showing in the Blue Ridge, which means that pumpkin spice lattes and the fifty-ninth U.S. presidential election must be… Read More»

“Lonely Days and Fearful Nights:” The Norfolk Yellow Fever Epidemic
At its best, history opens a window in time that helps illuminate the past and the present. Such is Encyclopedia Virginia’s new entry on the long-forgotten Norfolk and Portsmouth Yellow Fever Epidemic… Read More»

Short Film About Virginia Slave Dwellings Receives Regional Emmy
Virginia Humanities announced today that the film, Mapping Virginia’s Slave Dwellings, has been awarded a National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Emmy Award in the category “Historical / Cultural: Program Feature.” …